The second feature film from German provocateur Jörg Buttgereit, director of Nekromantik and Nekromantik 2, Der Todesking (“The King of Death”) presents seven suicides across seven days of the week.

As a chain letter from the self-proclaimed “Brotherhood of the 7th Day” circulates encouraging its recipients to end their lives, a series of grim murder-suicides unfold. In one vignette, a young woman massacres a room of concert-goers before turning the gun on herself; in another, a man, driven to madness by some unspecified mental disturbance, repeatedly slams his head into a wall before collapsing in a pool of his own blood… These are just some of depictions of death and despair that make up the tortured fabric of Der Todesking.

Regarded by many as director Jörg Buttgereit’s most accomplished work, Der Todesking is an existential masterpiece - a powerfully haunting howl of rage from one of the genre’s most underrated filmmakers.

That's great news! I've been very curious about this film ever since missing out on a chance to pick up the old Screen Edge VHS tape back in the late 90s (when it was one of Buttgereit's only films to be legally available in the UK). This looks just as death enamoured as the Nekromantik films but on a wider and more abstract level. Here's the (very NSFW) trailer

This is also the Buttgereit film that Barrel did not produce a packed US DVD edition of, though Adam mentioned a few years ago that a German edition of the film was available. I presume that this carries over the extras from that German edition? Or contains more?

It’s really haunting and beautiful and meta cinematic. Very formalistic, throughout, like some of the stranger passages of Nekromantik 2 and Schramm. It’s poetic and at the same time a massive downer. I’m a huge admirer of all three.

Yes, I waited a long time for that Barrel DVD. Ended up getting a German or Austrian one from Sazuma’s website. Now I have the Cult Epics Blu ray but I will support the Arrow version also. I hope they release Schramm before I cave in and buy the Cult Epics.